Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday October 09, 2011 @03:40PM
from the slightly-different dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from Examiner.com, citing a report at gagdet.ro, about Samsung's upcoming high-end Nexus Prime, the first phone to be delivered with Ice Cream Sandwich. "This version of the Nexus Series (Google's Android flag bearer) runs the next version of Android: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This version is meant to combine Honycomb (Android 3.0) with Gingerbread(Android 2.3) into one OS, that will run on all devices. In addition to the merger of the two OS's, it also changes the Android UI a bit. One major change, is that the icons and the UI is a lot more sophisticated and clean, making even iOS look old and clunky. Also, it removes the requirement for Android phones to have hard/soft-hard mixed buttons, in favor of allowing manufacturers to use whichever type of button they wish. Also, it adds a soft button on the lock screen, to go straight to the camera app."

Even with 4.3" about three quarters of the population won't be able to reach all points across the screen with their thumb when using the phone one-handed without balancing it on three fingers. And not many people will like a phone that NEEDS both hands to use it.

Maybe I'm totally wrong, but honestly I think that these huge screens are totally idiotic if you really want to go mainstream with a phone. See, half of your potential customers are women (which tend to have smaller hands) and not too few will be teenagers.

And then have a line of three or four small buttons (on or off the screen) on the very bottom of the face and a screen that stretches 4.3 inches across to the top. Using this thing while walking and carrying something with the other hand is like eating soup with a fork.

And no, I'm not trolling here. These things are great for males with large hands or for geeks who usually sit down over anything resembling a computer anyway and would love it to have foot switches, too. But how can those companies just walk over the needs of major parts of the population and expect to be sucessful with this? I just don't get it. Or of course Google and Samsung are purposefully limiting their target group to a certain part of the population, because... yes, why would they do that? Any ideas?

Even with 4.3" about three quarters of the population won't be able to reach all points across the screen with their thumb when using the phone one-handed without balancing it on three fingers. And not many people will like a phone that NEEDS both hands to use it.

It's like totally too hard to drive, text and apply makeup at the same time with this phone!

I agree with you. I wouldn't want to carry around these larger phones. That's why it's a good thing Android gives you choice. Apple has fewer options and forces you to choose between a 3.5" screen or a 10" with nothing in between.

Yeah, maybe. But this wasn't my point. I agree that 3.5" may be too small or too large for certain people and then it's good to have a choice. Nothing to argue here. I'm not saying that there should be only one phone or one screen size for everyone. Choice is good. Nothing wrong with that.

But I think that Apple just has totally nailed it for the majority of the population with that screen size. Not for everyone, but for most. What I'm wondering then is why Google/Samsung are putting up that phone with a scr

No doubt. But still: Is NOT targeting the majority with your latest and greatest phone a wise move? I mean, this thing is meant to be THE Android Smartphone by Google(TM). Why not targeting it smack at the middle of the mainstream right up against the iPhone? How can you be successful if about all the Android phones that are better than "halfway usable" are fighting over the big-handed technophile geeks, leaving the majority of potential customers to either buy second rate cheap Android phones or an iPhone? How silly is that?

As The Onion headlined a few days ago: "Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing Dies". How apt.

At some point, producing a phone for large-handed guys who love technology is going to result in your latest and greatest phone being aimed at a small part of the population (although they are probably a much larger part of the smartphone market). Has to happen some time.

I don't think most people who aren't gadget nuts are really all that interested - my father-in-law, for example, had an original iPhone and was about to replace it a month before the iPhone 4 was announced. He was totally unaware of thei

NOT targeting the majority with your latest and greatest phone a wise move?

No sane business plan ever targets "the majority". That's an excellent way to set yourself up for failure. Every marketing strategy first targets a very small group and then new strategies are created to target the next group.

For example, even the first iphone targeted very specific users. Later it expanded with each iteration. The first iphone didn't have 3rd party app support and the iOS App Store wasn't available yet. It wasn't until 1.5 years AFTER the initial announcement of the first iphone that the itunes App Store was released.

The basics in marketing are to come up with a marketing strategy that will succeed in a specific target market. Make your target market everyone and you're guaranteed to fail.

I mean, this thing is meant to be THE Android Smartphone by Google(TM).

The nexus phones are Google's way of pushing the Android market where they would like to see it. You can think of it as "seeding" the competition.

For example when Google released the Nexus One, it was the first phone with Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor. During this period, many manufacturers were trying to build the cheapest Android they could get away with so most of the phones came with slow processors and minimal RAM. Google didn't like that, and had the Nexus One built. With that came other "fast" phones (for the time) like the HTC Incredible which shared specs with the Nexus One VERY closely. That wasn't a surprise considering that HTC also manufactured the Nexus One. Immediately following this, all the other manufacturers followed up with their own offerings with similar or better specifications.

Sometime in the future, perhaps Google will start to compete with their own hardware. But at this point, I don't think that is their primary goal. The primary goal is to push the Android market forward. Secondary would be making money on the hardware since they already are the source for the OS.

As The Onion headlined a few days ago: "Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing Dies". How apt.

You do know that The Onion is 100% satire? You've lost a lot of credibility with that kind of statement.

My Droid X2 has a 4.3" screen, and it fits my hand wonderfully. I specifically chose it over competing phones for that reason. That's one of the many nice things about Android -- you don't have a single model that has to be one-size-fits-all. There can be different models targeted towards different market segments.

Maybe I'm totally wrong, but honestly I think that these huge screens are totally idiotic if you really want to go mainstream with a phone. See, half of your potential customers are women (which tend to have smaller hands) and not too few will be teenagers.

Is the Nexus line really branded as a 'mainstream' product? I figured it's targeted at the gadget-crazy that would find the extra real estate useful. That seems to be Android's niche anyway -- more male, more techie, more left-brained.

Even with 4.3" about three quarters of the population won't be able to reach all points across the screen with their thumb when using the phone one-handed without balancing it on three fingers. And not many people will like a phone that NEEDS both hands to use it.

I have issues with anything 4" or above and I don't think I have hands that are that small. On my Galaxy S with a 4" screen I could barely use it with one hand, and on an HTC HD7 that was totally impossible with it's 4.3" screen. 4.65" is just ridiculous and starts to get into Dell Streak 5 territory. But on my iPhone I have no issues with one-handed use and I find it's 3.5" screen perfect. And I'm finding less and less of a reason to Jail Break it with each itteration of iOS.

The one thing i don't really like about my Nexus One is the semi-soft buttons, The back/menu/home/search buttons along the bottom are touch based but they _seem_ to be separate from the main touchscreen. However they are right next to the touchscreen and there is no divider. So often when trying to hit one of the bottom row of buttons i'll accidentally hit one of the four menu type buttons instead. This is especially problematic on the rare occasions when the touchscreen wigs out and detects my finger offset slightly from where it actually is. (I've seen this problem on more than one phone, so i'm not sure if it's a problem with the current version of Android or just a problem with multiple hardware sets.)

So encouraging full software buttons seems like a mistake to me in that respect. But in addition i really wish there were more physical hardware buttons. When listening to music or audiobooks i really with there were a physical set of buttons i could use without having to turn the screen back out. Rewind, play, pause and fast-forward would be the most obvious and useful ones. The volume rocker already works perfectly well has a hardware button that performs its function while the screen is off and there's plenty of room along the right side of the phone for more buttons.

I agree about the capacitative buttons, and is one of the reasons I'm hanging on to my HTC Desire is it's real physical buttons. *However*, the one saving grace of the screen-buttons is that they have decent click feedback (background goes bright blue) and (assuming that they work the same as in Honeycomb) if you do hit one accidentally, you can roll off it to avoid triggering it.

Not as good as real physical buttons, but I think it will be significantly better than the Nexus One-style invisible buttons.

Have you tried putting very thin slivers of tape above each button or even one long piece? You should be able to feel that edge and know when you're off the screen. It probably wouldn't have hurt if they etched the glass just a tiny bit so there was something to feel instead of one smooth piece of glass.

"One major change, is that the icons and the UI is a lot more sophisticated and clean, making even iOS look old and clunky."

As an all-time Android user and fan, I must say the new icons look awful. Especially the phone, camera and browser icons look as if they had been taken from windows 95. I'm sorry, but existing icons are much sleeker, and those icons aren't by a LONG SHOT as polished as in iOS.

The menus do seem a bit more polished, just like in Honeycomb, but everything else I don't see why it has impro

There is even still that hideous "flash" when reaching the end of a scrollview. I have run cyanogenmod and changed the yellow to a more blueish flash and I can assure you, the color change doesn't improve things.

With CM7, you can disable the overscroll glow, and use the bounce effect. Oh, and the bounce effect isn't included by Google (or Samsung any more (as of latest Galaxy S II builds) because it's patented.

I agree. I was really looking forward to the Nexus Prime and 4.0, but this is just embarrassing... it's so unpolished and amateurish. The color scheme, fonts, and icons on my stock Nexus S look 100x better.

My current iPhone 3GS is too dated and on its last legs. I am a big fan of iOS, and was planning to immediate buy an iPhone 5 this year, from any carrier, since my old contact has long expired and I am only paying month-to-month. But since Apple decided after nearly a year and a half to slap their loyal fans in the face and refused to produce and release any significant hardware improvements, let me tell you, I am strongly considering this Samsung Nexus Prime as my next phone.

Do not wait for HTC to release a phone with a better camera. Samsung makes, hands down, the best camera in the Android game right now. The Camera on my Nexus S was really good, but, a little lacking. The camera on my Galaxy S2 is nothing short of phenomenal. I would imagine the Nexus Prime to have the same sensor and maybe better optics.

...I just came from a long line of HTC phones before these last two Samsungs...and I will be getting the Nexus Prime when it comes out. The HTC's have "pretty good

If Android 4.0 really is good, switching would be fine. I've never had an iPhone but I have an iPod Touch. I also recently purchased an Android phone (it's brand new but only 2.2, unfortunately). The whole interface is unpolished and clunky compared to iOS. Android crashes on me on occasion, something I've never had happen with iOS. I really prefer iOS but Android is pretty good. Maybe 4.0 will finally catch us with iOS. Yes, I know there are a lot more things (geeky things) you can do with Android but I st

I recently switched from an iPhone 4 to a Nexus S 4G, and my experience is exactly the opposite. The reason I switched was because I recently started working for Google and I'm doing some work on Google Wallet, so I decided I'd better get more familiar with the platform. But I expected to find that Android was less polished than iOS, and I expected to miss my iPhone (which I gave to my wife).

In fact, I think that Honeycomb (don't know about previous versions of Android) is much more polished and better

I think you summarized the Android v iOS question pretty well. I'm in a similar boat -- a long time iOS user that's wanted to move to Android, but it's just not there yet. Maybe Ice Cream Sandwich will be?

I do have to take exception with one thing you said, though: "Apple...refused to produce and release any significant hardware improvements [in the 4S]". I hear refrains like this all over the place and just don't get it. The 4S has the same screen and case profile as the 4 but everything else is updated. T

And my phone is more reliable, the battery life is longer, I never run out of memory, I can view my mail and news sites in the browser, and I can use Maps. Since I don't use Market, I don't have to enter a Google email address so that those evil Googlers can track my every move.

And then there are the Android app developers. Invariably they want access to my contacts, they want to impersonate me, they want real-time access to my GPS location, even for apps as simple as Droid Flashlight.

And then there are the Android app developers. Invariably they want access to my contacts, they want to impersonate me, they want real-time access to my GPS location, even for apps as simple as Droid Flashlight.

iPhone apps do the same, and you don't even get a chance to check what permissions apps use to decide which flashlight app to install (the one that does access your contacts, or the one that doesn't, hmm, tough choice:)

sounds to me like the megahertz game and the feature game all over again. On something with a small screen I don't really want tinier writing because it's a 1080p device and I want it useful. having a zillion gestures that different applications subset is not useful. Having a few gestures that all apps use in common ways it useful. I'll take complex on my desktop, but Simple and useful is what I want in a phone. Now one might say, well to each his own. But that's the point. If all phones work pr

Only an apple fan can argue that higher performance, more specialization, and a larger feature set are actually a step in the wrong direction, and a one-size-fits-all approach to manufacturing is the right choice.

Higher performance? By what measure? Last I checked Android's entire UI is predominantly CPU-bound. iOS renders _everything_ using opengl- that's why paging between screens of apps is so damn smooth and is able to track your finger perfectly on even the original iphone. iOS apps are also far more optimized for performance (objective-c/llvm) and for battery (close attention paid to app lifecycle/background tasks, etc).

This was changed in Honeycomb, and therefore ICS. The UI is done in the GPU now, like it should be. They were also discussing a new emulator that's much faster due to using hardware GPU rendering instead of in software.

Even the original iPad is smoother than the new Android tablets, from what I've seen, and often more responsive. It's certainly the case versus the HP Touchpad (though webOS is still a much better interface overall). Granted, it's been a couple months, so things may have changed.

Just my 2c... My 2 yo HTC Desire with launcherpro and cyanogenmod will outsmooth an iPhone 4 every day of the week. Apart from that, I could swear that since 2.3 the GPU could be used to render the UI, if available, but that's beside the point. ( And that's from a phone that when launched you could get for 200$ less than an iPhone and that now costs less than half the price an iPhone 4 does (unlocked). )

Also, Android will try, when resources are free, to pre-load the applications you use the most, so that w

I don't think objective-c has much of a learning curve at all- and being a dynamicly typed language makes it a joy to develop in. I'm an iOS developer and I used to be a Java dev.
C++ is certainly more difficult and less suited for GUI development. Objective-C has some first-class frameworks.

You're entitled to your opinion, but keep in mind that you're the exception, not the rule. And I've done both android and iOS, so I can tell you now that my hair turned white trying to do simple things on iOS that took me 30 minutes on Android.

On the other hand, it seems to be impossible to do a bad looking GUI for iOS. I tip my hat to apple in that - but only that.

Objective-C is a strict, and rather simple, superset of C. It's really easy to learn. I think most people freak out when they realize its syntax isn't like Java or C++ (it's more like Smalltalk). Sounds like you're complaining more about the libraries and frameworks, which obviously take a lot longer. It would be nice if iOS had automatic garbage collection, though--Java has a clear win there. Obj-C 2.0 on the Mac has it, though, so I imagine it will show up on iOS devices at some point.

Also, citing objective-C as a reason for better and faster apps also shows ignorance. Ignoring the fact the Objective-C is a nightmare to program to (and that it has a stupidly steep learning curve)

Look, I'm an Android/Linux fanboy and haven't bought an Apple product in over a decade, but how can you say Obj-C is difficult with a straight face? It is c with a minimal set of extra features added on. When I used to regularly program in c, I was able to pick up Obj-C in an afternoon.

I don't understand how somebody who prefaces their defense of Android with "well if you root it and install some tweaked OS and some other bits of shit here and there, you can get it to be nice" could ever be seen as schooling anybody.

Second, Objective-C, despite being what you claim is a nightmare to program for, has so many top notch applications that your claim falls flat on its ass. You can program in C / C++ for Android, but you're still running everything through Goggle's ripoff virtual machine, with no performance benefit over using Java. If your iOS programming buddy tells you to first get a webview, he may just not be the most awesome programmer ever.

Er hang on. If you write C / C++ apps they're running natively. There is little if any Java / Dalvik at all aside from some glue perhaps if you want to launch some other activity or something similar. As for performance benefits, Dalvik is a register based VM, Java is a stack based VM. Completely separate things. Since 2.2 Dalvik runs the app through a JIT after which would execute at a reasonable clip, certainly nothing to be bothered about in the vast majority of apps, and if it was an issue, well C/C++

I do. I can make a video with it if it makes you happy, but having a phone with as much horsepower as iOS without the clutter actually makes it way smother. iOS is full of little hangs and stutters that are hidden under "cool" animations, but they're there.

Second, Android is not slow out of the box. Android on a 100$ phone might be slow out of the box, but if you're comparing a 700$ iPhone with an Android phone, at least have the decency to chose

Higher performance? By what measure? Last I checked Android's entire UI is predominantly CPU-bound.

There's a lot of GPU-rendering in gingerbread now. Admittedly probably not enough, but enough to give the user a smooth, reponsive experience. Try using a phone with cm7 on it, and experience what gingerbread should be like. I suspect that ICS will be using a UI that's fully GPU-rendered.

One of the early problems was that some hardware makers (HTC, for example) never appreciated this difference, and rendered all of their abominable HTC Sense UI in software, making it painfully choppy. I'm not sure if th

The entire OS in Android is also C based.The application stack runs a Dalvik VM which (since Froyo) does JIT compilation. Just about all the CPU-intensive stuff (i.e. UI drawing) is done in the C side through JNI. In any case with JIT, the performance difference between C and compiled bytecode is insignificant.

sounds to me like the megahertz game and the feature game all over again. On something with a small screen I don't really want tinier writing because it's a 1080p device and I want it useful. having a zillion gestures that different applications subset is not useful. Having a few gestures that all apps use in common ways it useful. I'll take complex on my desktop, but Simple and useful is what I want in a phone. Now one might say, well to each his own. But that's the point. If all phones work pretty much the same I don't have to learn how to use a different phone. It's not how most people want to expend brain cycles.

Is this where Apple fans begin to make the decisive turn from "iPhones are the best and do the most" to "iPhones do less, run slower, and have fewer pixels because high speed and resolution overload are confusing for grandma?"

Hardware specs are not the best measure of user experience. And considering the relative number of apps for the different platforms I don't think "iPhones do less" is an a accurate statement. So the answer to your question is, "No".

I was playing with a 1ghz dual core, Nvidia Tegra Android tablet not that long ago, it wasn't bad at all but the browser wasn't anywhere near as smooth as the one on my 2 year old iPhone 3GS.

As much as I like Android, the UI is laggy and unresponsive where iOS is fluid and snappy, even on the 1st gen iPhone, Android phones have been using the CPU for UI rendering while iOS devices offload this to the GPU.

So while they look better on paper, they're still not quite as good in practice.

It's so funny, because I was thinking the exact opposite. The phone in the video looks complicated and ungainly. The user can't even hit the bottom buttons properly. He's moving things around the gui in ways that look totally cryptic, like some alien ui in a movie. I don't even own an iPhone and I've picked one up before and used it like I had been using it for years...

Android doesn't seem to be "winning" in the only thing that counts for a business -- profits.

Apple also comprehensively won the "profit" war back in the day with Mac computers. Guess which platform 94% of the world isn't using today?

The current trend is looking very much like the 1990s all over again -- Apple with its superior UI getting overrun by a platform which isn't quite as nice, but is distributed amongst many manufacturers and is much cheaper for end users to purchase.

And once again, as a geek, I'm not at all concerned, as it's a lot easier to hack the Android platform than the Apple equivalent. PCs brought us Microsoft supremacy, but they also brought us linux; Android's shaping to be much the same, and as long as Google and manufacturers like Samsung openly encourage users to hack their phones, I'll keep supporting them with my dollar. The fact that I'll be paying less dollars in doing so is just an added bonus:)

(I've never really understood the "more profit" argument from a fanboi perspective -- the fact that Apple is making users pay more for their phones is hardly a reason for the end users to brag. It's a great reason if you're seeking to buy Apple shares, it's not a good reason if you're in the market for a phone...)

Apple also comprehensively won the "profit" war back in the day with Mac computers. Guess which platform 94% of the world isn't using today?

So if market share is so important, then why is HP -- the worlds largest PC manufacturer --- trying to get rid if their PC business?

The current trend is looking very much like the 1990s all over again -- Apple with its superior UI getting overrun by a platform which isn't quite as nice, but is distributed amongst many manufacturers and is much cheaper for end users to p

So if market share is so important, then why is HP -- the worlds largest PC manufacturer --- trying to get rid if their PC business?

Well, I didn't say it was important. All I'm saying is that if you want Apple to take over the world, their current strategy isn't working.

How is Apple getting "overrun" when it makes 2/3's of the world's mobile phone profit. Grosses 17x it's nearest competitor in app sales (see previous response), and makes more selling computers than anyone else in the world?

Again, see above. If making lots of money by selling fewer units at higher prices floats your boat, then by all means praise Apple. It's a great success capitalism-wise; it's probably not such a great success if you want to count popularity as one of your objectives.

How much "less" are you paying for your Android phone than the equivalent iPhone (if you're in the US)> The fact is, that the carrier is paying a higher subsidy for the iPhone and you're still paying the same amount for your Android as the equivalent iPhone and your monthly bill is the same.

I'm not in the US, so I can't comment on the situation there. I was also buying my phone outright. Ne

One company can not compete with 10+ in terms of hardware innovation. Apple can release a phone maybe once a year, there's a new Android super-phone out every 3 months, and lesser new Android phones even more often.

Which just leads to people waiting for the next superphone, then waiting for its price to drop a third within two months and then still not buying it, because until then the next superphones got pre-announced. Or finally get one and then see it drop and drop in price and newer and newer models being annonced while their own phone doesn't get updated anymore and feels like four years old half a year later...

Only geeks can think model avalanches are what people want. Most people want, if they spend lots of mo

My guess? They will say that the source will be "coming soon" for the next few years, until they release Panda Bear Turd or whatever the next OS will be called, never release the source, but people will forget or make excuses for Google as they have regarding their closed source Android 3 implementation.

And if they do release the source, it'll just be because they were almost caught being evil and will need to work harder at it next time?

Honeycomb: - Experimental. Rushed. Beta-quality. Embarrassment.
- Supports <1% of total Android devices.
- Deprecated within 1 year of release.
- No hacker community.
- No code contribution pledge. No history of open source.

Ice Cream Sandwich:
- Open source commitment made back in January/February of '11.
- Theoretically it supports most Android devices.
-

Well, considering the source code to Gingerbread 2.3.4 (what my phone runs) is fully available as Google said it would be, and Google said Android 3.x Honeycomb would be closed as it is, why would you doubt them? Android 4.0 Ice Cream will be open source and the Cyanogen guys will be hacking it into working ROMs for every phone on the market soon after it's released.

No, the reason is because the source for 3.0 is broken. Yes, it will work on tablets, but for the majority of Android devices out there it simply will not work. So instead of releasing a broken product, they are putting off releasing the code until it is in a state where it is usable.

Every new version of Android has increased the system's speed on existing hardware. It's getting more efficient, not less.

That's really great that new OS's increase the speed on existing hardware since current Android users can always count on their devices to run the latest OS and being upgraded immediately after a new OS is released for at least two years.....

Yes, these "features" appear to be rather annoying flare rather than actually increasing productivity and usefulness.

Then again, I'm still not a fan of anything touch capacitive and only marginally tolerate touch resistive displays... Even if it means getting a crappier device, I'll take physical buttons and a QWERTY keyboard on a phone any day as I just feel more productive and less error prone having them.

No, the point is it doesn't show the user what to do to return to where he came from before. Having another screen half turn, half slide in from two directions at once gives you no fucking clue how to go back. You're just staring confused and dazzled at what's going on on the screen. A good UI should help the user to get some spatial orientation by relating to physical models.

iOS animation cues are under patent and Google can't copy it. Android's new animation are not perfect, but they provide a smooth and polished way of transitioning between screens compared to older versions and doesn't interfere with Apple's patents.

Google needed to implement animations for screen transitions because that's how transitions should be. It doesn't matter what they look like or what information they convey as long as they look "polished" and smooth. It just happens that some of the most "polished" ones have been patented by Apple, so Google cannot use them; but it's OK, they found some others. They'll do the job because they look cool and smooth and "polished."

I was watching him do the little demo and thinking to myself "Just what the fuck is going on here?"

It looks like there was a different group of people, maybe in different parts of the world, developing each bit of chrome and flash for the UI, without ever talking to each other or trying it all out at once to see what worked and what didn't. Then they drank it all down with some raw eggs and anchovies, and barfed it into a gigantic bowl, moaning "I'm DONE man!"